Nutritional and Phytochemical Content of Freeze-Dried Fruits of Two Philippine Bignay (Antidesma bunius (L.) Spreng) Cultivars

Bignay (Antidesma bunius (L.) Spreng) is a fruit-bearing tree that is indigenous to the Philippines and in different parts of Asia with bignay-common and bignay-kalabaw as the two most locally abundant cultivars. Its fruits are being consumed as food and have been recently studied for its antioxidant properties. However, several chemical constituents of bignay fruit are still yet to be explored. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals present in bignay-common and bignay-kalabaw fruit. Using HPLC analysis, bignay-kalabaw was observed to have higher vitamin A and E contents than bignay-common. On the other hand, bignay-common was higher in terms of vitamin C content with 25.996 ± 0.688 mg/100 g freeze-dried fruit compared to bignay-kalabaw. Mineral analysis using ICP-OES revealed that bignay-kalabaw fruit had more calcium, copper, and manganese content than bignay-common. Conversely, bignay-common had significantly higher iron content than bignay-kalabaw. Qualitative screening using methanolic extracts revealed that both cultivars possessed 9 out of the 14 phytochemicals tested, namely tannins, saponins, flavonoids, quinones, terpenoids, phenols, coumarins, steroids, and phlobatannins. The findings obtained in the present study indicate that the fruits of these bignay cultivars contain health-promoting compounds and have potential to be used as food supplements. Further in vitro studies for the two bignay cultivars are recommended. Keywords: Antidesma, ‘Common’, ‘Kalabaw’, Nutritional, Phytochemical